Sara E. Thomas
I will show students examples of each of the elements of design in specific photographs in
Images of America: New Haven Reshaping the City
. These examples will give students first hand knowledge of how the elements and principles of design work. They will then be challenged to look through the 24/7 books (a more modern series of photographs) to find more examples of the same elements of design. They will need to be able to defend why they think that a particular photograph successfully uses a specific design element.
The first important element of design is line. Buildings are extremely geometric and create lines from their walls, windows, beams, siding, walkways, roofs, etc. Lines lead your eye through the composition and can make a building feel stable or dynamic. A good example of strong vertical lines is on page 49 of
Images in America
, showing all of the construction workers lined up on each floor of the infrastructure of the Church Street redevelopment. The strong vertical lines in the concrete and the cables, along with the repetition of vertical bodies make this feel like a very strong, safe structure. On page 69 of
Images in America
the bird’s eye view of Long Wharf shows all of the highways, on ramp and off ramps. The diagonal and curved lines lead your eye through the composition and make it feel very busy and alive with movement. We equate horizontal lines with stability and calmness. We equate vertical lines with strength and growth. We equate diagonal lines with movement and instability. Our eyes are most drawn to diagonal lines. This information is extremely important when photographing a building because by simply changing your vantage point so that the focus in the composition shifts from horizontal lines to diagonal lines the building will have a very different feeling to it.
The next important element is shape. The viewfinder of the camera is a specific format and as soon as you introduce another shape into the viewfinder a relationship is immediately created. (Dean 82) The building creates a positive shape, or focal point while the sky or the environment around the building creates the negative space. Positive and negative space should always balance each other. If there is too much negative space the building looks very unimportant and dwarfed by the sky. If there is too little negative space you will begin to crop out important parts of the building. The rule of thirds is a common tool used by photographers. It involves breaking the frame down into nine squares by using two vertical and two horizontal lines one-third of the way through the frame. Think about just superimposing a tic-tac-toe board over the frame. It is a good guide to place focal points at one of the places where the lines intersect. It is also good to place your horizon along one of the horizontal lines, so that it does not break the frame perfectly in half -- creating a boring image. There is a good example of using the rule of thirds on page 48 in
Images of America
, which places the huge new geometric building along the left third of the photograph. The horizon line runs along the bottom third and because of this placement along with the converging lines and the negative space this is a very well composed image.
Related to positive and negative space is value. Value is the lightness or darkness of an image, and contrast is the difference between the two. You can create a focal point by having a very dark composition with only a small light area and the viewer’s eye will immediately be drawn to that particular part of the image. Also, light and dark values are what are going to make the buildings feel like they have volume, instead of appearing flat. This relates back to sunlight and time of day that the image is taken. There is a good example of contrast in
Images of America
on page 50. The contrast of the new, dark, geometric skyscrapers make the light, pristine, organic church seen through them really pop because the contrast in value is so high.
The last important thing to capture in the photograph is texture. Buildings have a variety of textures that can tell you about the materials used to construct the building and also how well maintained the building is. They provide rich values and lots of interest in photographs. A good example of this is in
Images of America
on page 103 showing Lou-Marin’s Furniture and Appliances. This image shows the grainy, rough, worn texture of the wood directly next to the smooth, clean glass of the storefront making an interesting juxtaposition of textures.